


Cleared Hot

by trill_gutterbug



Series: Change in the R.O.E. [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Handjob By Proxy, M/M, Masturbation, Nate Needs a Nap, Some informal D/s elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 08:02:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18587128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/pseuds/trill_gutterbug
Summary: The last thing Mike expects to see when he comes around the corner of the outbuilding is Lieutenant Fick having a combat jack.





	Cleared Hot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/gifts).



> For lingua, who is, as usual, an absolutely terrible influence.

The last thing Mike expects to see when he comes around the corner of the outbuilding is Lieutenant Fick having a combat jack. But he’s seen stranger things out in the desert, stranger things in his own platoon - mirages, the peculiarities of men under stress - and he’s too well-conditioned to doubt the proof of his own eyes. 

“Shit, sorry,” he says, at the same time Nate jerks his hand out of his MOPP with a gasp. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t, uh -” Mike breaks off, wincing. If it were anyone else, he’d roll his eyes and continue on, business as usual, but Nate’s staring at him big-eyed and shocked, looking about as mortified as it’s possible for a person to look. His kevlar is sitting upturned on the pile of bricks to his right, and although he’s standing ramrod straight now, clutching his fatigues shut at the waist, Mike can still see, like a burnt after-image, the way he’d been slumped against the wall, shoulders loose, head rolled back. Eyes shut. Hand moving.

“Sorry,” Mike says again, when he realizes he’s still standing there like an absolute idiot, staring at his beet-red LT. “It can wait.”

He’s already turned around and taken two steps away by the time Nate speaks. 

“No, no, it’s - it’s fine.” There’s a scuffling sound. Mike looks over his shoulder to see Nate hastily doing up his MOPP, yanking the buckle shut with a tight-lipped savagery that makes Mike’s nuts prickle sympathetically. “I apologize, this is extremely unprofessional of me. Please, let’s -” He’s fumbling for his kevlar, pointedly avoiding Mike’s eyes. “What did you need?”

“Hey, no,” Mike says. “It’s okay, it’s nothing urgent. You can, uh, come find me when you’re free.”

Nate looks up at him, kevlar in the crook of his arm, a nauseated fish-belly paleness showing around the splotches of sunburnt pink on his cheeks. “Absolutely not." The sharpness in his eyes is an expression caught somewhere between teeth-gritted humiliation and desperate pleading.  _ Please, _ it says,  _ don’t make this worse. I deserve whatever you’re thinking of me, but please don’t say it out loud.  _

It breaks Mike’s fucking heart. 

“Hey, hey, no,” he says again, gentler this time, turning around properly. There’s an invisible and unbreachable perimeter of etiquette that springs up around any man in their cirumstances the instant he gets a hardon in public, ratified by social necessity and enforced by the explicit threat of defensive violence, and it’s a perimeter Mike has studiously observed for almost the entirety of his military career. But there’s a secondary force at play here, and that is the unexpectedly compelling combination of Nate Fick and tender, desperate embarrassment. Mike has been rigorously trained to take care of his officers, to do whatever they say whenever they say it, regardless of personal feelings or convenience. It’s been an unexpected pleasure, these last few months, to discover that his personal feelings and his concept of convenience align almost flawlessly with Nate’s. And it’s hard to overcome that kneejerk instinct to do what the LT needs before the LT even knows he needs it. Mike finds himself taking a step forward, pulled by the sixth sense that’s always told him when to duck in a firefight, when to give an insubordinate private some slack, when an AO is about to go kinetic, when that village looks a little  _ too  _ quiet, and when Nate needs him. 

“We’re all on edge out here," he says, dropping his voice just in case anyone’s walking by. “We all need to let off a little steam sometimes, it’s no big deal.”

Nate stares at him, mouth parted not like he’s about to say something, but like he’s still breathing hard from touching himself and hasn’t noticed yet. He shakes his head, eyebrows crumpling in the way that Mike’s always thought makes him look on the verge of tears, even though he’s never seen Nate cry even under the most miserable of circumstances, and is pretty sure he never will. 

“That’s not it,” Nate says, words coming fast, the forceful rapid-fire he uses when his TLs are getting rowdy, when a situation is trying to spiral out of control. “That’s not it, I don’t need to - I shouldn’t need to -”

“But you do,” Mike says, interrupting like he normally never would. The look Nate shoots him is as incredulous as it is, suddenly, expectant. “You’re not Superman, Nate, despite what some of men think.”

The flush on Nate’s cheeks deepens. God, of course. Of course mentioning his implied duty, the regard of his men, would make Nate blush. Of course he’d look at the ground like that and then back up, his shoulders squaring, jaw trembling as it firms. Mike’s chest squeezes with unbearable affection for this boy, his boss, one of the best officers he knows, a man who’d rather bite his tongue and stuff his hard cock back into his uniform than do anything that might jeopardize the wellbeing of his men - even if that wellbeing is just the supply order of new MRE flavors in Mike’s pocket that needs a signature. 

“It’s okay,” Mike says, and takes another step forward. “Everything’s under control. You can have five minutes by yourself.”

Nate’s meeting his gaze head-on, now. He’s very still, watching Mike’s careful approach. “By myself,” he says. It’s barely a question, but Mike answers it anyway. 

He shrugs. “If you want to be.”

Nate’s chest rises and falls a little faster. He’s staring at Mike with an intensity that’s making every nerve in Mike’s body snap to attention. He feels that familiar little shiver in the soles of his feet, in the palms of his hands; the threat of adrenaline, of giddy excitement. Finally, Nate shakes his head. That’s all. No words, no come-hither coy lowering of eyes, no change in his posture, but Mike understands it like a printed neon sign. He pulls his kevlar off as he steps in close, letting it fall at his feet. 

“Come here,” he says, soft, but Nate’s already dropping his shoulders back against the wall, letting go of his own kevlar, opening his body for Mike to press against. He makes a little noise when Mike touches him, a helpless quivering exhale that brushes the side of Mike’s face and tickles his ear. He’s shivering finely all over, Mike realizes. His own adrenaline rush, his own heart-pounding unsure excitement. Conversely, the palpability of Nate’s uncertainty makes Mike calm. It’s his job to step in where the LT can’t, to take the reins when they slacken, to anticipate gaps and fill them. He knows what to do.

He takes Nate’s right wrist and pulls it between their bodies, guiding it to the buckle of Nate’s MOPP. “Go ahead. I got you.” He means it literally, the wall of his body like a revetment between Nate and anyone who might stick their head around the corner, his hand firm on Nate’s wrist, but also figuratively; he’s taking Nate’s slack, he’s picking up the reins. He looks down to watch Nate open his suit and slide his hand inside, then back up to watch Nate’s eyes shut, his teeth clench at the first short stroke. “Good,” Mike says. “There you go. That feel good?”

Nate makes another noise, this time a choked little whimper that doesn’t make it past his teeth. He grinds his head back into the wall, brows furrowed. He looks simultaneously orgasmic and in excruciating pain. Mike doesn’t like it. He slips his hand up between Nate’s head and the rough wall, pulling him forward. “Relax,” he says into Nate’s ear, letting his lips brush the edge of it. “It’s okay, you can relax. You’re doing good.” 

He rubs his palm up and down the back of Nate’s head, feeling the short soft buzzcut and the sweat prickling from Nate’s scalp, and then squeezes the nape of Nate’s neck. That gets him a reaction he’d only barely anticipated. Nate moans, loud enough to be dangerous, and melts against Mike’s chest, sagging forward against him. Mike braces his feet to take the weight, curling his other arm around Nate’s waist. Pressed together like this, he can feel every motion of Nate’s moving hand between them, the top of Nate’s fist hitting Mike’s belly on each upstroke. Mike’s whole body flushes with hunger, with hot aggressive  _ want _ . Of all the fucking times and places to find someone like Nate. Not back in his Texan hometown with his cozy little house right around the corner, not in some big west coast city just down the block from a nice hotel, not even on base in Oceanside where they could get passes and head out of town for the afternoon. No, it had to be here, in the middle of the goddamn desert, behind an adobe shack in their two-week-old MOPP suits with twenty other guys in hearing range. The universe sure can be a motherfucker.

But Mike doesn’t let on any of these thoughts to Nate. He can bitch God out on his own time. Right now he’s got a job to do. He pets down the back of Nate’s neck, rubbing his knuckles into the knots of tension there, stroking his fingertips under the collar of Nate’s MOPP. It’s hot and sweaty, the smell of Nate’s unwashed body rising thick out of the suit. Mike shuts his eyes to breathe it in, entertaining for a second the thought of everywhere else Nate might be sweating and chafed, the raw insides of his thighs and the pale dip of his back, the patch of angry razor burn under the edge of his jaw, the tight little swell of his ass. Mike bites down his own groan, thinking about how, if this weren’t such a precarious thing, if they had privacy or even just a bit more time, he’d suck on two fingers to get them wet and slide them down the back of Nate’s pants, find the tiny clenched fist of his hole and coax it into being friendly, fingerbang him until he can't stand up. He wonders if Nate’s a virgin down there, or if he fooled around with other boys or maybe adventurous girls in college, if he does right by himself sometimes when he’s alone and feeling safe. 

“Mike -” Nate gasps, like it’s been punched out of him. He grinds his face into the side of Mike’s throat, panting stickily, his arm shaking with the strain of his jacking.

“Yeah, okay,” Mike says to him, shutting his eyes and cradling Nate into him, holding him tight so Nate doesn’t have to hold himself so tight. “That’s good, sweetheart, go ahead, you’re alright.”

The breath bursts out of Nate in a miserable whine, then cuts off, his whole body going rigid. Mike can’t feel the hot splash of jizz, he’s sure it’s all going straight into Nate’s MOPP, the poor kid, but he can feel the spastic clenching of Nate’s body with every spurt. Nate’s hand, curled tight in the front of Mike’s suit, has seized shut like a vise. 

“There you go,” Mike murmurs, soothing. “There you go, okay.”

It goes on and on, and it’s only when Nate can’t hold his breath anymore and sobs with a wet choking noise, still coming, that Mike realizes maybe it’s been longer than he thought since Nate last got himself off. Maybe since they were deployed, maybe longer. It makes Mike feel terrible, but also electrified with purpose. He wants to say out loud that he’ll never let it get so bad again, he wants to promise Nate he’ll do better, he’ll pay more attention, he’ll make sure Nate’s getting whatever he needs before he needs it. But he keeps his mouth shut. Actions speak louder than words, he’s always known that. 

Finally, Nate starts to go lax against him. His fingers uncurl from Mike’s suit. He breathes out, slow and trembling, through his mouth. Mike pets him through it, murmuring nonsense under his breath, until Nate slowly pushes away from him and straightens up. His eyes are wet and hazy, but there’s a growing light in them Mike hasn’t seen for a while. A sturdy, certain calm. He sniffs, raising his left hand to wipe beneath his nose. His lips, red and dented with teeth marks at one corner, quirk up. 

“Thanks,” he says. There’s a little hook of irony in the word, which Mike acknowledges with a quirk of his own mouth. 

He takes his hands away, even though he wants desperately to touch the soft curve of Nate’s bottom lip, thumb away the dampness at the corner of his eyes, take him by the back of the neck again and guide him onto his knees. He thinks he knows exactly how Nate would respond to that, with a softening of spine and a grateful quietness. Maybe he’d rest his head against Mike’s thigh and go to sleep like that, wrung out and limp, and wake up later bright-eyed and happy, refreshed, ready to keep leading them into the desert. Mike’s heart skips at the thought, but he keeps it to himself. There’s always next time. 

Nate’s still looking at him with that open, vulnerable expression, waiting for Mike to reply. 

Mike smiles. “Anytime, LT.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [R&R](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18636085) by [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua)




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